The present technology relates to an image processing apparatus, method, and program, and more particularly, to an image processing apparatus, method, and program enabling further reduction in the size of the data to generate.
The dynamic range of images has been increasing recently due to advances such as image sensors with higher bit depths and displays with high bit support.
Hitherto, many research findings regarding the coded representation of high bit depth images have been reported. For example, there has been proposed a two-stage coding method that creates a low bit depth image by tone mapping, and then encodes the difference between that decoded image and the original image with a separate encoder (for example, see “Bit-depth Scalable Video Coding”, Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. on Image Processing, pp. 1-5 to 1-7, 2007 (W. Winken, D. Marpe, etc.)).
Also proposed is a method that realizes a bit rate reduction during lossy compression by applying Lloyd-Max quantization instead of tone mapping (for example, see “A Study of Coding Method for High Bit Depth Image Using Bit Depth Transform”, IEICE General Conference 2009, S-5, 2009 (Ito, Bando, Takamura, Kamikura, Yashima)).